- Hardcover: 504 pages
- Publisher: Chatto & Windus (1 May 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0701136219
- ISBN-13: 978-0701136215
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.7 x 4.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 927,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Sunday Times
‘A work of singular accomplishment’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Daily Telegraph
‘a forlornly moving elegy to a generation...’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The third and final volume of White's autobiographical trilogy, and, in my opinion, the least achieved one. Too many characters, too much adventures, turn some moments of these book a kind of a broken hearts' catalogue, with no density whatsoever.
The good point is: even when he is not so good, White's writing is delicious and amazing.
The good point is: even when he is not so good, White's writing is delicious and amazing.
3 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As a young man Edumnd White comes to terms with the gay society of New York and to boyfriend leaving him. He travels to Rome and to Paris pursuing his desire to be published. He is in the mist of the gay promiscualility and loves it. He is one of the Clones of the city. As he becomes more successful he realises that he doesn't really know what he wants. He ends up looking after his nephew and his girlfriend with his own boyfriend in the same flat. He moves to europe and meets the love of his life. But in the mist of the Aids plauge he dies. Many of Edumnds friends also die and he is left positive watching them leave him, knowing he has not long left.
1 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I read the first two books of the trilogy with less and less energy and interest. Nevertheless, the first book was satisfying - its flaws were compensated by its qualities. In this volume however, only the flaws are left.
The writing is sometimes clever, but it doesn't make up for all the times when it's pompous, affected, nothing more, I regret to say, than intellectual wanking. The author goes from place to place (New York, Paris, Italy) and from character to character without making any point. Of course, one does not *have* to make a point, if the characters are entertaining and the scenes thrilling. This is not the case here. We just follow this insipid self-loathing and mysoginist young gay man whose only quality is to have friends that are better than him, and hear about his constant changing moods, his failures and his tedious sex life.
This book seems like a self-published book. As if it hadn't been edited: Pages and pages of uninteresting, irrelevant details and facts and events that could and should have been cut out. The only interesting moment of the book is the death of his friends - it is, indeed, moving. But then again, how hard is it to be moving when one is talking about aids? Nothing to be proud of.
In conclusion, an overrated book from an overrated author, whose success symbolizes the problem of gay litterature: There's so little of it that it doesn't take much to make a "classic"... In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
The writing is sometimes clever, but it doesn't make up for all the times when it's pompous, affected, nothing more, I regret to say, than intellectual wanking. The author goes from place to place (New York, Paris, Italy) and from character to character without making any point. Of course, one does not *have* to make a point, if the characters are entertaining and the scenes thrilling. This is not the case here. We just follow this insipid self-loathing and mysoginist young gay man whose only quality is to have friends that are better than him, and hear about his constant changing moods, his failures and his tedious sex life.
This book seems like a self-published book. As if it hadn't been edited: Pages and pages of uninteresting, irrelevant details and facts and events that could and should have been cut out. The only interesting moment of the book is the death of his friends - it is, indeed, moving. But then again, how hard is it to be moving when one is talking about aids? Nothing to be proud of.
In conclusion, an overrated book from an overrated author, whose success symbolizes the problem of gay litterature: There's so little of it that it doesn't take much to make a "classic"... In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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